Migrant educators take trafficking fight to Guatemala

Carlisle Johnson, host of "Good Morning Guatemala," an English radio show on a popular Guatemalan chain of radios with Genelle Grant, rear, and Brigita Gahr, foreground. Grant and Gahr are migrant educators with the Florida Migrant Interstate Program based at Florida Gulf Coast University. They delivered public service warnings about human trafficking to radio stations throughout Guatemala during a two-week visit last month. They were guests on the show twice during their trip.

Courtesy of Brigita Gahr

Brigita Gahr and Genelle Grant, of the Florida Migrant Interstate Program, a statewide education outreach for migrants based at Florida Gulf Coast University, visited schools and villages in Guatemala during their two-week trip last month to warn people about human trafficking and learn about the education system there. They visited 10 schools including this one built with support from Miracles in Action, a Naples-based nonprofit organization. It was the only school, apart from one private school, they visited that had textbooks for all of their students.

Courtesy of Brigita Gahr

Better you than us.

That's what migrant educators from Southwest Florida heard when they delivered public service announcements warning about human trafficking to rural Guatemala last month.

Brigita Gahr and Genelle Grant encouraged leaders in remote Huehuetenango — where two Southwest Florida human trafficking victims once lived — to air the messages on community radio stations.

The young girls are in protective care in Lee County.

Rural Guatemalans, fearful of addressing the topic, welcomed the women carrying the message.

"They recognized this was a problem," Gahr said. "But the mayor specifically said, 'I'm glad this is coming from you because for us, it's too dangerous.' They have to maintain disassociation.

"There is that fear that they themselves can't touch this," she said of the Guatemalans.

The messages recorded in Mayan languages and Spanish warn parents that their daughters could become human trafficking victims in this country, los estados. Scores of people illegally migrate from the impoverished Huehuetenango region bordering Mexico to the U.S. and end up in Southwest Florida.

"A lot of people leave that area and they're never heard from again. People were horrified to hear that this could happen to young girls that they were sending up," Grant said, referring to human trafficking.

"But honestly, I think that many people will think if you have to go through that a few years, that's a price you have to pay."

Traffickers often lure people with the promise of a better life but enslave them once they cross the border into the United States.

Gahr and Grant work with the Florida Migrant Interstate Program, a statewide outreach program for migrant students based at Florida Gulf Coast University. The messages were made with $5,000 in grants from Unitarian Universalist organizations.

Educators also delivered the recorded messages to a popular Guatemalan radio chain based in Guatemala City said to reach 85 percent of the Guatemalan population. They were guests on an English radio show broadcast by the chain twice during their two-week visit in May.

Carlisle Johnson, the host of "Good Morning Guatemala," brought Troy Fitrell, the human rights attaché at the U.S. Embassy in Guatemala, and Grant and Gahr together to talk about trafficking.

Johnson said listeners were receptive to the warnings but "chagrined" that Guatemalan agencies hadn't yet thought of putting them out. Awareness about human trafficking and the dangers people could face in the migration north is still sorely lacking in Mayan populations, he said.

"Why is this, that this should originate in the U.S.?" he asked. "Think of how impressionable a 14-year-old is ... and add to that illiteracy and you've got a real recipe for exploitation."

He is trying to get the messages run continually on 40 stations owned by the chain that reach regions where Mayan people live. He hopes to convince the Ministry of Education in Guatemala to adopt the project as well.

Fitrell, the attaché, said Southwest Florida is among the few regions in the United States trying to distribute information about the dangers of human trafficking in Guatemala as well. Spreading awareness is a challenge, he said.

Parts of Guatemala are so isolated that radio signals don't even reach them. Spanish is often the second language for Mayan people. There are dozens of Mayan languages spoken.

"Awareness levels are low but increasing and that's why we're dedicating resources. Unfortunately, the forces that lead people to abandon homes searching for a better life remain as strong as ever," he said.

The U.S. State Department just signed a $172,000 grant for an international organization to do radio spots throughout the country warning people about human trafficking and to provide legal, medical and psychological counseling to victims in Guatemala, Fitrell said.

Grant and Gahr also visited 10 schools to learn more about the education system in Guatemala. They found most children didn't even get to sixth grade in rural schools they visited. Most schools were extremely resource poor and didn't have computers for students, they said.

The women visited a school supported by Miracles in Action, a Naples-based nonprofit organization that has built four schools in rural Guatemala and has two more in the works. The women said it was the only school, apart from one private school they visited, with textbooks for all of their students.

Penny Rambacher, the East Naples resident who founded Miracles in Action, hopes to support Grant as she pursues a project to make recordings about a young woman who crossed the border. The goal is to provide a warning for young girls and include tips about how not to become a trafficking victim or get raped.

Rural educators could then use the recordings in Guatemalan schools.

Gahr hopes to take what she learned to migrant educators across the state and country. She wants to collect computers to send to Guatemala.

Anyone interested in donating used computers to schools in Guatemala can contact Gahr at 826-7245 or bgahr@fgcu.edu. For more information about Miracles in Action, go to miraclesinaction.org .